Infrastructures exist to provide Internet video from various service providers or services. For example, the Sony Bravia® Internet Link (“BIVL”) technology from Sony Corporation provides a hardware device which when coupled to a broadband Internet connection allows access to Internet video services through a management server infrastructure. Such infrastructures deliver recorded audiovisual media content such as video, music, and audio files.
While such infrastructures are powerful, user experience can vary. For example, in some cases a lack of a standard or common way to access content can be frustrating to a user. Particularly at television viewing is commonly used for relaxation, a viewer's experience should be one of ease and convenience. Hurdles to viewing should be removed, and as much as possible the viewer's experience should be simply one of choosing content and viewing.
Streaming refers to a delivery of media content in a constant fashion, from a transmission at a source to a reception and presentation at a receiver. For example, Internet delivery of digital content presentations to network computers is commonly streamed, as is Internet television content.
Streamed content can include content that is pre-recorded or live. One type of live streamed content are popular events such as concerts and sporting events. One inconvenience associated with such live streamed content is that the event may not begin at an advertised time, and the user may encounter frustration and annoyance of not knowing when to begin watching. At a more technical level, the system may on-demand poll the service provider for the event, and if millions of other viewers are doing the same, server load may become a problem for the service provider server.
In a particular example, a major football game may be scheduled to start in an hour and may be displayed as a live streaming asset or content item on a user interface grid to a user. The user may have made many preparations for the event. After some time, the user may select the football game to start viewing the content. A “coming later” poster may be presented to the user after an on-demand polling to the service provider server hosting the game. The user may exit and come back after thirty minutes, and the user may subsequently be presented with a “coming soon” poster after an on-demand polling to the service provider server hosting the game. The user may then await additional time, only to find out that the game has been delayed. Such can be a source of significant frustration and annoyance to the user. On the technical level, the impact on the service provider server due to load traffic and frequent polling is also significant. Hundreds of requests may not be a concern in terms of request load and availability, but polling by millions of IPTV devices would be a significant problem for a service provider server.